Literatures and Sound: Modernism, Harlem Renaissance and Beyond - Detailseite

This project tutorial explores the sonic and non-linguistic dimensions of writing. How do we approach texts differently if we extend our interpretations beyond the semantic level of the text to also consider the meaning of words as spoken, subvocalized or even howled?

The tutorial covers various aspects of literary sound studies, from texts that are imbued with music, as in the jazz aesthetics of Harlem Renaissance writers and Toni Morrison's novel Jazz, to the nonsensical writing and wordplay in the poetry of Yoko Tawada and Gertrude Stein, which link sound to questions of voice and identity. Another sonic dimension of literature that we will explore is the soundscape. How are writers influenced by the sounds of their environment? In what way do inventions such as the gramophone influence literary works? The tutorial will largely draw on the fields of literature and language studies, musicology and gender studies.

Authors/sound theorists discussed: Jackie Kay, Allen Ginsberg, Ralph Ellison, Angela Davis, Virginia Woolf, Friedrich Kittler, R. Murray Schafer, Roland Barthes, etc.